(Comments added for week ending Sun 04 Nov 2001) | View Other Weeks
| last updated:16 Aug 2002 13: 33 Webword time, or 16 Aug 2002 18:33 UK time |
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| Webword Statistics - Recent Comments (Comments added for week ending Sun 04 Nov 2001) | View Other Weeks |
| WebWord Comment | Sun 04 Nov |
| My brother just visited my web site a few minutes ago. He sent me an email explaining that a link on WebWords Hot Sites page now points to a porn site. Yikes! Obviously I removed the link. Has this ever happened to you? How many times have you been fooled by a link? I wonder how often people change their sites from normal content to pornography. I doubt that any research has been done, but does anyone have any data on this? |
| Sun 04 Nov 16:22 | Beth Mazur | I'm not sure that folks intentionally switch to porn. In a case I'm familiar with, the site owners decided to change domain names, and (foolishly) decided not to spend the bucks to redirect their old domain to the new one. Big mistake! When this was pointed out to me by one of our site visitors, I first changed our link to the new one, then did a search on AltaVista to find that over 200 sites linked to the old URL. It's hard to imagine why porn sites go to the trouble though. It's like the whitehouse.gov vs whitehouse.com link. Do they really think they'll convert visitors to sales from folks who really wanted the White House site? |
| Sun 04 Nov 16:31 | Anonymous | John: Anecdotal evidence: This happened not long back on a site I maintain for my company. I believe this is most often a result of a domain expiring and porn sites buying the domain name just to transfer you over to one of their sites. In our case, we got an angry call from a parent whose child had clicked on an innocent-looking link. It was one of those really aggressive ones that opens a new window and maximizes the browser. In one of those weird coincidences, I had just read about one of the foremost perpetrators of this practice, and it turned out to have been perpetrated by that same guy, based on the domain name record. Folks at my company felt it was best not to talk much about this, which is why I've posted this anonymously. Proof that automatic link checkers can't tell *what* you're linking to. |
| WebWord Comment | Sun 04 Nov |
| I visit MyYahoo.com several times per day. I generally like it and find it very useful. However, today I was assaulted by a Monsters, Inc. Flash advertisement (77K GIF screenshot). I know that Yahoo needs to make money, but this was terrible. Let me explain. First, it interrupted the song I was playing in Winamp. It skipped along for about 5 seconds. Second, after I was forced to wait for the advertisement to download, I scrolled down the page. Moments later, the ad automatically expanded down over the material I was reading. It covered up about 10 links. The advertisement literally covered up 75-80% of the screen. If you dont believe me, look at the screenshot I took! Ive seen other things like this on Yahoo and I am really losing faith in them. Other forms of advertising can work and it pains me to see Yahoo taking this unfriendly approach. |
| Sun 04 Nov 06:56 | Svend Svenstrup | I'm an eager yahoo-fan as well, and MyYahoo has proved itself to be a tool to me almost as natural as breathing, but today I was struck by the horrific add as well. I totally agree, in advertising as well as other aspects of life, sometimes less is more. In many of the danish portals these adds has shown there ugly faces as well, for instance at www.ni.dk, which recently have begun using 'pop-ups' and at www.jubii.dk the animated gif similar to the above. Well, thank's for webword's simplicity. As a working usability consultant I check in almost every day to keep up with the latest news. Much appreciated. |
| Sun 04 Nov 11:34 | Jack Schonchin | PLEASE! Yahoo ran itself into the ground long ago when it decided it was appropriate to place hundreds of links on the front page. I count 238 today! Three years ago all of my coworkers and friends used Yahoo. Today they all use Google. I would like to see a profile of the type of people who use customized 'my' portal features. I just don't know anyone who does. |
| Sun 04 Nov 13:21 | Filipe Fortes | Don't just complain on WebWord ... let Yahoo! know what you think (the Ad Feedback link just below the add). If you look at the page, you'll notice that they've at least got some intuition that sound would annoy users. I too use My Yahoo! I've gone to the page many times, and the ad only expanded once on me (out of about 15 visits). I really don't like the expansion (or the sound) ... but I much prefer the large size to any popup/under. |
| WebWord Comment | Fri 02 Nov |
| Some kind soul bought me Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon through my Amazon.com Wishlist. Thank you! |
| Sun 04 Nov 12:47 | Jon Burnham | I did - you deserve some easy time off - your newsletter is great and interestingly eclectic |
| Information vs. Experience | Fri 02 Nov |
| (A List Apart) HTML is already becoming a no-man’s land: presentation is shifting into stylesheets, and structure is moving into XML. The latest versions of HTML are turning into little more than the glue that ties the structural richness of XML (via XSL) to the presentational richness of CSS, the interactivity of JavaScript and server-side programming, and the hypermedia elements of video and Flash. |
| Fri 02 Nov 09:20 | Bob | Blech. A fixed-typeface site. I could care less what they have to say about web design. |
| Fri 02 Nov 14:07 | Jack Schonchin | A List Apart is more about attitude than research-based user-oriented design. It's a hangout for young rebels and 'experience' designers. |
| Why I use Yahoo! Mail | Sat 27 Oct |
| I have used Netscape mail, Outlook Express, Outlook and PocoMail. All of them have many features that I miss using Yahoo! Mail. None of them are as simple to use as Yahoo! Mail. |
| Fri 02 Nov 03:47 | Neil | I use Hotmail, it's just as easy if not easier to use. |
| Usability Folks Hate Pop Ups | Tue 30 Oct |
| (CHI-WEB) In summary most of you suggested doing usability tests with some target users and having my customers watch. Your experience from testing and watching users is that the experienced users avoid popups and close them as soon as they appear. (Comments: Several good points are made. Some references and data are included.) |
| Thu 01 Nov 14:44 | Scott | Contrary to the comments in this article, we have found through our usability testing that the pop-ups that we’ve incorporated in a web redesign project proved to be quite successful. The pop-ups were used to reference an “informational” icon that provides assistance with a particular piece of the page. Almost all of our test participants used the Info pop-ups and provided positive feedback. I would reevaluate the implementation of these if they did not work well for your project. |
| Thu 01 Nov 16:55 | Jack Schonchin | Let's draw a distinction with pop-ups. Users are inclined to accept a pop-up when it arrives in response to a specific information request. For example, in customizing a PC for purchase through Dell.com I can click for more information about specific hardware components. In seeing the pop-up appear I am inclined to view it because I expect it to contain valuable information. Contrast that with pop-ups that appear unexpectedly. Those pop-ups are more likely to be considered advertising or useless information and be closed before the page loads. |
| WebWord Comment | Sun 28 Oct |
| Why is Cameron Barrett turning entire paragraphs into links? Hes been doing it a lot recently. Does anyone have any ideas as to why he is doing this? What do you think about it? Is it good? Is it bad? Does it bother you? I seem to remember reading a User Interface Engineering article about link length, but I cant find it. |
| Mon 29 Oct 05:07 | Andy | See also Jakob Nielsen (2000). 'Designing Web Usability'. Indianapolis: New Riders, page 55, where he advises against using the words 'Click here' in hypertext links. He recommends a link word count of 'two to four words long', plus an explanation of where the link will take the user. This explanation should give enough information for the user to decide whether to follow the link or not. He recommends against long links on the grounds that 'If too many words are used for a link, the user cannot pick up its meaning by scanning. Only the most important information-carrying terms should be made into hypertext links.' |
| Mon 29 Oct 07:35 | Frédéric Roland | The website of the french newspaper Le Monde does that also. http://www.lemonde.fr |
| Mon 29 Oct 08:13 | John S. Rhodes | Interesting. Is Spool right or is Jakob? Who has the better research? Now I'm really interested in the underlying data. Has anyone else noticed that people are getting really sloppy with their links? I have recently had a very hard time figuring out where I will go when I certain links. |
| Mon 29 Oct 13:01 | Sandra | I almost hesitate to say anything, but I think his long links really work in this case. Now for the qualifiers: I only like the effect when the type is a little larger (size 2/3 or 12/14pt) and in a roomy layout, like this one. Cramped paragraphs with small text are unreadable when they are hyperlinked like that (underline or no). In general, I prefer the 4-5 word hyperlinks, but in this case I am more likely to read and be intrigued by the paragraph than I would be to see only a few words highlighted. If I thought it was yet another XP link, I might scan right over it. |
| Tue 30 Oct 10:40 | Tom | I'm skeptical that the entire paragraph as a link works well at all. I'd like to see test results. What do you expect to see when you click on the paragraph in the example? I'm not sure if I'd go to microsoft's website, to a restaurant, to a tourist trap? Where? Would a novice user (if that is relevanta any more) see this paragraph as one link or is each line a link? Compare this to the short link in the paragraph above it. It is clearer there, I think, exactly what you would see next. The one benefit of having an entire paragraph as a link, I suppose, is it is easier to aim your mouse at the link. Other than that, I don't see the advantage. |
| Wed 31 Oct 11:18 | César | A (weak) argument that would favor the use of long links is Fitt's Law, according to which the link will be an easier target to reach. (Fitt's Law: The time required to acquire a target is proportional to the distance to the current position of the pointer, and inversely proportional to the size of the target). |
| Welcome to Zork | Sun 28 Oct |
| You are in an open field west of a big white house with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here. (Comments: Excellent.) |
| Mon 29 Oct 09:31 | Dennis G. Jerz | Is there an alternate URL for this page? The URL given in the link is http://thcnet.net/error/404.php, which predictably turns up an error. For readers who are interested in the history of Zork (and other text-only computer games) I recommend the following: http://web.mit.edu/6.933/www/Fall2000/infocom/presentation/ http://www.textfire.com/raiffaq/ifaq/ http://www.uwec.edu/jerzdg/orr/articles/IF/index.html http://www.uwec.edu/jerzdg/orr/articles/if/adams/ Enjoy! |
| BlogBoard for IS271 | Sun 28 Oct |
| This is a forum for students of IS271, SIMS, UC Berkeley. (Comments: I think that this is the first blog that I have seen that is being used for educational purposes. It is powered by Greymatter, which I think is interesting. The class is called Quantitative Methods for Information Management (Focus on usability design and testing). Here is the class homepage, if you are interested. Very cool stuff.) |
| Mon 29 Oct 06:27 | Greg Ritter | You're way behind on the educational blogging front! Some are used by classrooms, some are used as professional development tools to help communities stay on top of education issues: See: http://www.schoolblogs.com http://www.teachesme.com http://www.slashlearn.org http://instructionaltechnology.editthispage.com http://www.elearningpost.com http://www.postsecondary.net/ http://www.cilt.org/ltseek/ and many more... |